For our own sanity and to not get this topic closed, let’s everyone stop responding to this guy. If he wants to remain ignorant that’s his choice.
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Well that clearly makes you more qualified to speak of the language over dictionary writers. Not. 
To the ignore list you go.
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Not using “flower viewing” as a translation here keeps people from assuming that they can use this word to describe like… looking at their grandma’s garden or something. If you tell a Japanese person you did 花見 with your grandma, they are going to assume you saw sakura trees with your grandma.
I don’t have anything to say to this, I just wanted to quote it.
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Roses are red violets are blue 花見 is 楽しい just like all of you. 
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Roses are red?
well it’s my name too
my girlfriend’s japanese
so I know more than you!
an ode to this thread
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Lol /selfdecide
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Every Japanese class has some smartass who argues with the professor on the basis that their girlfriend/boyfriend says blahblahblah or their favorite anime says such-and-such, etc. There’s no convincing them, really. The God of Japanese has spoken.
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Anyone can ask the question to a native in a way that elicits the response that, yes, at the base meaning it is literally “flower viewing.” No one denies that’s the structure of the word.
But if you say はなみ to Japanese people, they will imagine drinking beer or eating bento at the park with sakura trees all around.
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sounds like a lovely winter day~ (sakura bloom in january in okinawa!)
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Man y’all get them early! Must be nice 
We didn’t get ours until mid-late April up here in the Fukushima mountainsides. I was still waist-deep in snow in January!
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Yeah, it’s some weird argument he keeps making that makes no sense. As if anyone has ever claimed a cherry blossom is not a flower.
Heck you can go to the Japanese wikipedia article on 花見 and pretty much all the pictures involve sakura trees.
The first sentence of the article is even (with emphasis added):
花見（はなみ）は、主に桜の花を鑑賞し、春の訪れを寿ぐ日本古来の風習である。
Again, this is something written predominately by native speakers and again it emphasizes that the term is mainly in reference to 桜.
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And just to be clear. If someone wants to add flower viewing as a synonym, that’s their prerogative. I don’t think a single person has argued that you absolutely cannot do that. It’s not like adding “skin meat” as a synonym for 皮肉 or something, where it misses the main meaning so egregiously that it would be pointless.
However, if you intend to argue that you can use 花見 to describe any instance of enjoying looking at any flower… Well, let’s just say you’ll be fighting an uphill battle with the Japanese people you talk to, getting them to accept your interpretation.
At various points in the topic, you seem to have argued for both of these, even though one is reasonable and unobjectionable if the person understands the context of what they’re doing, and the other is just wrong and unsupportable, but that has been a theme in all of these discussions.
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Your attempts to persuade me otherwise are futile. It is a word that literally translates to flower viewing. It does not literally translate as anything other than that.
Words are about more than literal translations, though. It is more about the image it invokes in people’s minds. How about you do a google image search for 花見 and see if any other flower comes up?
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I know this topic is basically beating a dead horse at this point, but I just wanted to add my two cents. I took the 420 hour 日本語教師養成講座 course (one of the qualifications needed to teach Japanese to foreigners living in Japan) and this exact topic came up in our class. The professor noted that when teaching Japanese to people, you need to not only teach words and their definitions based on kanji used or translations that might conveniently exist in English or other languages, but also the nuance of the words.
In Japan, 花見 refers to looking at cherry blossoms. But don’t get caught up on the “but the kanji is see and flower” aspect… the noun 花見 encompasses EVERYTHING about cherry blossom viewing. The beauty of the pink/white petals, the fleeting nature/short lived-ness, the checking of various news forecasts to find out when they will be 満開 to get that perfect shot/selfie, spreading a blue tarp under the tree and having bento/drinks with friends, family, coworkers etc… all of this nuance and feeling is built into the word 花見.
I highly suspect OP is a troll and just getting everyone worked up, but I figured I would write this for anyone else who is interested in language learning/teaching or the likes. Thank you for listening to my Ted talk.
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Thanks guys. I’m never going to get 花見 wrong now. Can we have a thread like this for each of my leeches too?
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